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Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at
the luxury and magnificence of Napoleon's court.
The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room
where many generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates-
several of whom Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor
of Russia- were waiting. Duroc said that Napoleon would receive
the Russian general before going for his ride.
After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty
came into the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked
Balashev to follow him.
Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which
led into a study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor
had dispatched him on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting.
He heard hurried footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it
were opened rapidly; all was silent and then from the study the
sound was heard of other steps, firm and resolute- they were those
of Napoleon. He had just finished dressing for his ride, and wore
a blue uniform, opening in front over a white waistcoat so long
that it covered his rotund stomach, white leather breeches tightly
fitting the fat thighs of his short legs, and Hessian boots. His
short hair had evidently just been brushed, but one lock hung
down in the middle of his broad forehead. His plump white neck
stood out sharply above the black collar of his uniform, and he
smelled of Eau de Cologne. His full face, rather young-looking,
with its prominent chin, wore a gracious and majestic expression
of imperial welcome.
He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head
slightly thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad
thick shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding,
had that imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty
who live in comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best
of spirits that day.
He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow,
and coming up to him at once began speaking like a man who values
every moment of his time and does not condescend to prepare what
he has to say but is sure he will always say the right thing and
say it well.
"Good day, General!" said he. "I have received
the letter you brought from the Emperor Alexander and am very
glad to see you." He glanced with his large eyes into Balashav's
face and immediately looked past him.
It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest
him at all. Evidently only what took place within his own mind
interested him. Nothing outside himself had any significance for
him, because everything in the world, it seemed to him, depended
entirely on his will.
"I do not, and did not, desire war," he continued,
"but it has been forced on me. Even now" (he emphasized
the word) "I am ready to receive any explanations you can
give me."
And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons
for dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the
calmly moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor
spoke, Balashev was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace
and intended to enter into negotiations.
When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly
at the Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he had prepared
long before: "Sire! The Emperor, my master..." but the
sight of the Emperor's eyes bent on him confused him. "You
are flurried- compose yourself!" Napoleon seemed to say,
as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked at Balashev's uniform
and sword.
Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said that
the Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his
passports a sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on
his own initiative and without his sovereign's assent, that the
Emperor Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with
England.
"Not yet!" interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing
to give vent to his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as
a sign that Balashev might proceed.
After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev added
that the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter
into negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashev hesitated:
he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written
in his letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov
and had told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered
these words, "So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian
soil," but some complex feeling restrained him. He could
not utter them, though he wished to do so. He grew confused and
said: "On condition that the French army retires beyond the
Niemen."
Napoleon noticed Balashev's embarrassment when uttering these
last words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began
to quiver rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he
began speaking in a louder tone and more hurriedly than before.
During the speech that followed, Balashev, who more than once
lowered his eyes, involuntarily noticed the quivering of Napoleon's
left leg which increased the more Napoleon raised his voice.
"I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander,"
he began. "Have I not for eighteen months been doing everything
to obtain it? I have waited eighteen months for explanations.
But in order to begin negotiations, what is demanded of me?"
he said, frowning and making an energetic gesture of inquiry with
his small white plump hand.
"The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire,"
replied Balashev.
"The Niemen?" repeated Napoleon. "So now you
want me to retire beyond the Niemen- only the Niemen?" repeated
Napoleon, looking straight at Balashev.
The latter bowed his head respectfully.
Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from
Pomerania, only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded.
Napoleon turned quickly and began to pace the room.
"You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond
the Niemen before commencing negotiations, but in just the same
way two months ago the demand was that I should withdraw beyond
the Vistula and the Oder, and yet you are willing to negotiate."
He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other
and again stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that
his left leg was quivering faster than before and his face seemed
petrified in its stern expression. This quivering of his left
leg was a thing Napoleon was conscious of. "The vibration
of my left calf is a great sign with me," he remarked at
a later date.
"Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder
may be made to a Prince of Baden, but not to me!" Napoleon
almost screamed, quite to his own surprise. "If you gave
me Petersburg and Moscow I could not accept such conditions. You
say I have begun this war! But who first joined his army? The
Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer me negotiations when I
have expended millions, when you are in alliance with England,
and when your position is a bad one. You offer me negotiations!
But what is the aim of your alliance with England? What has she
given you?" he continued hurriedly, evidently no longer trying
to show the advantages of peace and discuss its possibility, but
only to prove his own rectitude and power and Alexander's errors
and duplicity.
The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with
the intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position
and showing that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But
he had begun talking, and the more he talked the less could he
control his words.
The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt
himself and insult Alexander- just what he had least desired at
the commencement of the interview.
"I hear you have made peace with Turkey?"
Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.
"Peace has been concluded..." he began.
But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to
do all the talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort
of eloquence and unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people
are so prone.
"Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without
obtaining Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign
those provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes," he went on,
"I promised and would have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia
and Wallachia, and now he won't have those splendid provinces.
Yet he might have united them to his empire and in a single reign
would have extended Russia from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths
of the Danube. Catherine the Great could not have done more,"
said Napoleon, growing more and more excited as he paced up and
down the room, repeating to Balashev almost the very words he
had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. "All that, he would
have owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!" he
repeated several times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold
snuffbox, lifted it to his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.
"What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander's might
have been!"
He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as the
latter tried to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.
"What could he wish or look for that he would not have
obtained through my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging
his shoulders in perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to
surround himself with my enemies, and with whom? With Steins,
Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled
from his own country; Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode,
a fugitive French subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier
than the others, but all the same an incompetent who was unable
to do anything in 1807 and who should awaken terrible memories
in the Emperor Alexander's mind.... Granted that were they competent
they might be made use of," continued Napoleon- hardly able
to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts that incessantly
sprang up, proving how right and strong he was (in his perception
the two were one and the same)- "but they are not even that!
They are neither fit for war nor peace! Barclay is said to be
the most capable of them all, but I cannot say so, judging by
his first movements. And what are they doing, all these courtiers?
Pfuel proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and Barclay,
called on to act, does not know what to decide on, and time passes
bringing no result. Bagration alone is a military man. He's stupid,
but he has experience, a quick eye, and resolution.... And what
role is your young monarch playing in that monstrous crowd? They
compromise him and throw on him the responsibility for all that
happens. A sovereign should not be with the army unless he is
a general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering these words
as a direct challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired
to be a military commander.
"The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven't
even been able to defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have been
driven out of the Polish provinces. Your army is grumbling."
"On the contrary, Your Majesty," said Balashev,
hardly able to remember what had been said to him and following
these verbal fireworks with difficulty, "the troops are burning
with eagerness..."
"I know everything!" Napoleon interrupted him. "I
know everything. I know the number of your battalions as exactly
as I know my own. You have not two hundred thousand men, and I
have three times that number. I give you my word of honor,"
said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of honor could carry no
weight- "I give you my word of honor that I have five hundred
and thirty thousand men this side of the Vistula. The Turks will
be of no use to you; they are worth nothing and have shown it
by making peace with you. As for the Swedes- it is their fate
to be governed by mad kings. Their king was insane and they changed
him for another- Bernadotte, who promptly went mad- for no Swede
would ally himself with Russia unless he were mad."
Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox
to his nose.
Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon's remarks,
and would have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man
wishing to say something, but Napoleon always interrupted him.
To the alleged insanity of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply
that when Russia is on her side Sweden is practically an island:
but Napoleon gave an angry exclamation to drown his voice. Napoleon
was in that state of irritability in which a man has to talk,
talk, and talk, merely to convince himself that he is in the right.
Balashev began to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean
his dignity and felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man,
he shrank before the transport of groundless wrath that had evidently
seized Napoleon. He knew that none of the words now uttered by
Napoleon had any significance, and that Napoleon himself would
be ashamed of them when he came to his senses. Balashev stood
with downcast eyes, looking at the movements of Napoleon's stout
legs and trying to avoid meeting his eyes.
"But what do I care about your allies?" said Napoleon.
"I have allies- the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them
and they fight like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand
of them."
And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had
uttered this obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still stood
silently before him in the same attitude of submission to fate,
Napoleon abruptly turned round, drew close to Balashev's face,
and, gesticulating rapidly and energetically with his white hands,
almost shouted:
"Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I'll wipe
it off the map of Europe!" he declared, his face pale and
distorted by anger, and he struck one of his small hands energetically
with the other. "Yes, I will throw you back beyond the Dvina
and beyond the Dnieper, and will re-erect against you that barrier
which it was criminal and blind of Europe to allow to be destroyed.
Yes, that is what will happen to you. That is what you have gained
by alienating me!" And he walked silently several times up
and down the room, his fat shoulders twitching.
He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out
again, lifted it several times to his nose, and stopped in front
of Balashev. He paused, looked ironically straight into Balashev's
eyes, and said in a quiet voice:
"And yet what a splendid reign your master might have
had!"
Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that
from the Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light.
Napoleon was silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently
not listening to him. Balashev said that in Russia the best results
were expected from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as
if to say, "I know it's your duty to say that, but you don't
believe it yourself. I have convinced you."
When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox,
sniffed at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal.
The door opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully,
handed the Emperor his hat and gloves; another brought hima pocket
handkerchief. Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to
Balashev:
"Assure the Emperor Alexander from me," said he,
taking his hat, "that I am as devoted to him as before: I
know him thoroughly and very highly esteem his lofty qualities.
I will detain you no longer, General; you shall receive my letter
to the Emperor."
And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception
room rushed forward and descended the staircase.
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